laboratory index> Royal Hampshire County Hospital

Royal Hampshire County Hospital

The hospital currently has 450 beds and 81 medical consultants. There is a complete range of clinical services with an A&E, ICU, SCBU, general medicine, surgery and paediatrics. A recent re-configuration of surgical services will centre all lower GI and breast surgery for Southampton & Winchester at the RHCH, with urology and upper GI at Southampton General.

The department serves a population of 220,000 in mid Hampshire including residents in Winchester, Eastleigh and Andover. There are two PCTs with a total of 262 General Practitioners.

Address

Royal Hampshire County Hospital

Romsey Road

Winchester

Hampshire

SO22 5DG

Tel:      01962 824455

Fax:        01962 853449

The Department of Clinical Biochemistry

Laboratory Organisation

There is currently a PPE Roche Modular, Integra 400 and Bayer Centaur which will change in winter 2005/6 to Beckman DXC and DXI analyser configuration with Beckman Automate pre-analytics. In addition there is a Sebia protein analyser, Menarini HbA1C analyser, a Unicam GC, IL 943, Unicam recording spectrophotometer, Bruker infra red instrument, Varian HPLC and 5 Radiance networked Radiometer blood gas analysers around the hospital.
In 2004 the department received 200,898 requests and 1,735,791 tests.

Specialist services

Bile Acids

Amiodarone and Desethylamiodarone

Cholinesterase Phenotyping

Protein studies, specialist interest cryoglobulins

Renal Calculi by infra-red analysis (service start anticipated early to mid 2006

Audits

A large clinical audit is carried out annually by the third year grade A trainee seconded from Southampton. Audits completed so far include bile acids, a study of SHBG for male testosterones and a longitudinal study of ACRs in type 1 and 2 diabetics. The audit this autumn is planned to be a study of the steroid management of ITU patients at the RHCH.